Friday, April 22, 2011

The Morning Nanos

Nik on the Numbers

As Canadians enter the holiday weekend, the Conservatives enjoy a comfortable lead but their current level of support would make it difficult for them to form a majority government.

The Conservatives continue to enjoy a 12 point lead, but factoring the margin of error for the research the Liberals and NDP are statistically tied. National support for the parties stands at 37.8% for the Conservatives, 26.1% for the Liberals, 23.7% for the New Democrats, 7.4% for the BQ and 3.5% for the Greens. NDP support has moved up for the third night in succession.

Factoring the margins of error for the regional subsamples, Atlantic Canada is now a three way statistical tie between the Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP, and the Bloc is statistically tied with the NDP in Quebec.

Support for the parties in Quebec stands at 31.8% for the BQ, 26.3% for the NDP, 18.6% for the Liberals and 16.7% for the Conservatives (the Quebec sample has a margin of error of ±6.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20).

For the third day in succession the Conservatives lead in regions west of the Ottawa River with a 6.8 percentage point advantage over the Liberals in Ontario, a 23.5 percentage point advantage over the New Democrats in the Prairies and an 18.7 percentage point advantage over the NDP in British Columbia.

Of note, NDP support has trended up in the Prairies over the past three nights and in British Columbia over three of the past four nights. In British Columbia the NDP have surpassed the Liberals and ballot support stands at 47.8% for the Tories, 29.1% for the NDP, 19.0% for the Liberals and 3.6% for the Greens.

Party platform was identified by one of two Canadians (50.8%) followed by party leader at 21.2%.